Spiritual Leadership

A key sentence in chapter 8 of The Healthy Small Church is Dennis Bickers' observation that, "I've never seen a strong, healthy church led by spiritually immature individuals" (p. 76).  If you're looking for a tool to get at an assessment of spiritual health, I'd suggest Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health (Donald S. Whitney, NavPress 2001) and The Emotionally Heathy Church (Peter Scazzero, Zondervan, 2003). They are both used as the basis of Chapter 15 of the EPC's Leadership Training Guide - "Leading Healthy Churches." Here's a sampling of the "Ten Questions":

• Do you have a healthy thirst for God? Psalm 63:1; 42:1-2. "O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for futher grace...I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made thirsty still" (A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God, p. 8).
• Are you more loving? (John 13:34-35; 1 John 3:11-20) "Cultivation [of Christian love] requires nothing less than the reversal of every instinct in our fallen natures...What the unregenerate cannot do, true Christians may and must."
• Do you delight in the bride of Christ? (2 Cor 6:16; Eph. 2:22; 1 Peter 2:9-10). Crhsit loved his people so much that he gave his life for them. Hw can we despise the very thing that Christ loved so dearly?

When pastors of small congregations were surveyed in 2007 to identify their most pressing issues, one that surfaced near the top was "lay leadership." I short, they commented that small churches have a small pool of people from which to choose leaders. They said that lay leaders in small churches tend to "recycle" and overcommit, which means that creativity may be lacking and leaders are tired. There may not be enough leaders to handle all the activities the church has to do, let alone the new things they want to do. Further, many lay leaders resist training and pastors have not been trained to train leaders.

I was asked recently if I had any surprises in that survey of small church pastors.  There's no surprise in the comments about having a small pool to choose from and that leaders in small churches are severely stretched.  That's a natural part of small church terrain. Easing the tension of that stretch means to stop trying to be a miniature large church by offering a wide array of programs without sufficient resources.  It means discerning and focusing resources on the small slice of God's mission that God has clearly called and gifted the church to do.  It's the last sentence of the summary (in italics above) that was my biggest surprise and a significant concern.  How can spiritually maturing leaders resist learning and training that will enable them to better exercise the calling God has placed on their lives?  I can understand going through a season of life when training has to be postponed, but not resistance.  And, I trust there's no contentment in our pastoral ranks about being untrained to to do training.  A core, biblical function of spiritual leadership is to "equip the saints for the work of ministry" (Eph. 4:11).

On the one hand there's nothing difficult about training others - it's as simple as being sure to carve out prioroity time to identify and spend time with people who are eager to grow and serve. On the other hand it's a demanding thing - it's life on life, unpredictable and can't be reduced to a program. The fruit is both frustrating and rewarding. Sometimes those who seem eager and promising flame out. But one of the joys of ministry is being in it long enough to see someone in whom you invested time still standing firm in the faith and being used by God in leadership.

For your reflection and comments -

What's your expereince dealing with spiritually immature leaders?  Bickers lists four ways: 1) confont them, 2) live with them, 3) help them grow spiritually, 4) work around them.  Have you used any of these four?  Would you add anything to the list?